


Long gone is this Little Hope

by Sashaya



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Child Death, Emotional Hurt, F/F, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 01:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4768808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sashaya/pseuds/Sashaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s nothing left for a woman who lost her Hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long gone is this Little Hope

**Author's Note:**

> **_Disclaimer:_** _I don't own any of the characters._

In the darkness, she could hear a soft voice. Delicate and easy, made of warmth and love and a drop of sadness. She could hear a memory, sweet and innocent, she could feel chaste kiss on her lips, like a promise made to be remembered forever, like something special that couldn’t be lost. She could feel a ghost peering inside her soul and it felt peaceful.

Even in complete darkness and void, Liara couldn’t leave her mind. 

(Even death couldn’t tear her completely from Liara’s warm embrace.)

(Too bad she never said the dreadful _I love yous_.)

 

Being born again was chaos, it was an ocean of brightness and sudden movements, it was a cacophony of bullets hitting glass and body. 

Nothing changed and Shepard’s new beginning started as the last one. 

 

She’s suspicious, careful of Cerberus, looks at them and her eyes bleed hatred, she sees people with purpose and people who experimented on Toombs. 

She knows why she wasn’t given a gun, why the armory is closed and locked before her, while she’s wandering the new Normandy. Her fingers still twitches and she’s battle-ready, she’s counting all the ways she could break them before Miranda would tear her piece by piece with her biotics. 

(She’s not underestimating Jacob, she’d be an idiot to do so, but Jacob is a soldier, normal like her. Miranda is an unknown, Shepard never met someone with her powers.

She shoves away the thought about Kaidan and how powerful he could be. What dead is dead and long gone.)

 

They give her directions, orders to follow and they pretend they can tame her, can satiate her bloodlust with few Collectors thrown her way. Shepard waits and watches. 

She will get Cerberus to spill its blood. 

 

Shepard takes a deep breath and Joker doesn’t even blink, when she turns the ship towards Illium. He doesn’t say a thing, when she stands by his side and watches the planet come closer, grow bigger. 

“Good luck” Joker says, when she takes off, when she doesn’t stop for Miranda and Jacob to notice her leaving. 

She doesn’t hear him anymore. 

There’s only space and void and Liara.

 

Nos Astra is bright and beautiful and every corner of this city reminds Shepard of Liara. Reminds her of pure asari, who was growing into something powerful, unstoppable. A force to reckon with, a name to stop armies.

For what she heard, she missed Liara’s _becoming_ – she only gets the ending.

(And the sweetest beginning.)

 

Shepard steps through Nos Astra with impatience, no grace – just elbows and bravado, that carried her since the start. She walks through Nos Astra with Liara’s past promises in her mind urging her forward.

Liara is different than she remembered and there’s something new in her eyes, something too much like despair, like pain and sadness.

Liara collapses in Shepard’s arms with tears streaming down her face. Everything stills and Shepard’s world is nothing more but the woman in her arms, the woman who keeps apologizing. 

“You were dead and I didn’t get the chance… you didn’t get the chance and I’m sorry” Liara cries, whispers, takes the air away from the room. “She had your eyes, not exactly your color but the fire, the determination, curiosity and courage. She was yours and yours alone and I wouldn’t be able to deny it even if I wanted…”

“Liara… Lila, I don’t understand you…”

Liara looks Shepard in the eyes and there’s a lost galaxy in them, one that Shepard hopes to find one day. 

“There was a child, my star, with your eyes and your stubborn streak. Allia was yours and mine blood, our Little Hope” there’s a river of sadness in Liara’s voice and Shepard can’t move, can’t breathe. There’s something closing over her head and clutching at her heart. “I had her after you were dead and I loved her for both of us. I wished you could be hers”

“Lila, where is my daughter?” Shepard asks in a trembling voice, ignores Jacob’s sharp intake of breath, ignores the shaking in her hands. 

“I’m sorry, so sorry, my star” Liara whispers, holds onto Shepard like she’s the last thing keeping her from drowning. “I wanted to give her the world and the world took her away from me, the same way the galaxy took you. I couldn’t protect her, I couldn’t…”

Shepard feels numb when she pulls Liara closer, when she hides her in her arms. 

There’s someone screaming in her head, yelling in pain and calling for blood.

There was a little girl with Shepard’s stubborn soul and Liara’s kind heart and Shepard would never meet her.

There was Shepard’s little blue child that she never held, that she never met.

(Death was less painful.)

 

It takes them hours, takes them seas of pain spilled between them before Allia’s story is full and complete ( _finished_ but Shepard can’t make herself think that).

Shepard hears of Liara’s climb to the top, of her conquering the world with right words, perfect intel and she’d be proud if she wasn’t so numb. Liara says about broken deals, dangers that crossed her path, about Allia’s clever head and first steps. Liara says about Shadow Broker and about his violent competiveness, about him being afraid. 

Liara tells a story about Allia’s broken body in her room, about Liara’s crusade to destroy, to burn.

 

“You were a great mother” Shepard says, when Liara is calm and collected, when she can stand and breathe. 

Shepard’s hand lingers, she wants to stop and stay, she wants to start anew.

She walks away.

 

There’s steel in Shepard’s eyes and her heart is calling for blood, for war. She’s marching with head held high and there’s no doubt she’s going to destroy the world.

There’s nothing left for a woman who lost her Hope.

**Author's Note:**

> I used [this generator](http://www.deviantart.com/art/Mass-Effect-Name-Generator-367877785) to come up with Allia's name.


End file.
